Brits would much rather have a closer economic relationship with EU than US

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Cathoholic said:
Regular_Atheist telling an American about how widespread an idea was . . .
I think it was a bit more widespread than just “some people.”
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Madison used empressment of US sailors to get Congress to declare war on Great Britain, with the objective of seizing some portion of the British North American colonies (or as we like to call ourselves these days, Canada). It was a move that Bismarck would use in his turn to invade France several decades later. Madison was a pretty naked imperialist who believed very strongly in Manifest Destiny.

As @Regular_Atheist points out, Americans seem to have put a considerable effort into minimizing their own 19th century imperial ambitions, and yet a fair chunk of the US was gained in an out and out war of conquest against Mexico, and it briefly held a global empire after it beat the Spanish in the Spanish-American War, another imperialist war waged on a pretty flimsy pretext.
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Regular_Atheist said:
No, but I think that was due more to physical limitations than a lack of willingness. As Vouthon has described, other places were forcibly annexed by the USA.
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Indeed, the United States displaced and conquered the Native American peoples in its mid-19th century expansion, annexed vast territory from Mexico (including Hispanics living there) of up to half its then landmass, militarily crushed the democratic and popularly supported First Philippine Republic that had been formed after the Philippine Revolution of 1896 against Spain and - with extensive damage and death that some scholars regard as a ‘genocide’ - waged a war (ending in 1902) to reduce that nation to the status of an American colony and likewise colonised Cuba, Guam etc. and then annexed the independent Kingdom of Hawaii as yet another colony in 1898.

Hawaii is the most egregious example because it was a fully sovereign state at the time, one with international relations vis-a-vis other states since roughly 1798.
 
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niceatheist . . .
Madison was a pretty naked imperialist
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I think a lot of the EU advocates are less naked but just as imperialistic.

You COULD call their imperialistic ideas, "Fabian Imperialism."
 
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Vouthon said:
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Regular_Atheist:
No, but I think that was due more to physical limitations than a lack of willingness. As Vouthon has described, other places were forcibly annexed by the USA.
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Indeed, the United States displaced and conquered the Native American peoples in its mid-19th century expansion, annexed vast territory from Mexico (including Hispanics living there) of up to half its then landmass, militarily crushed the democratic and popularly supported First Philippine Republic that had been formed after the Philippine Revolution of 1896 against Spain and - with extensive damage and death that some scholars regard as a ‘genocide’ - waged a war to reduce that nation to the status of an American colony and likewise colonised Cuba, Guam etc. and then annexed the independent Kingdom of Hawaii as yet another colony in 1898.

Hawaii is the most egregious example because it was a fully sovereign state at the time, one with international relations vis-a-vis other states since roughly 1798.
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Yes, Hawaii was a travesty by any measure, even in the late 19th century. But the flimsy pretexts for the US gobbling up Norther Mexico aren’t far behind, and there were no lack of critics of the Mexican-American War that made that point.

Heck, the US even had its own Cecil Rhodes in Sam Houston, an adventurer who did everything in his power, including prodding the Mexican Army into action and making overtures to European powers, so he could in turn goad the US into seizing Texas outright.

In part this was because it was the age of Empire, and the US was in no exception in land grabs, even when there were already people who happened to claim the land they wanted. Other egregious actions of note were the US joining the other Great Powers in carving out Treaty Ports in China. The US may have discovered an anti-imperialist streak in the mid-20th century, but in the 19th century it behaved little differently than the other Great Powers.
 
niceatheist said:
The US may have discovered an anti-imperialist streak in the mid-20th century, but in the 19th century it behaved little differently than the other Great Powers.
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I think that Woodrow Wilson (with his vision of a liberal international order of independent nation-states) in 1919 and FDR in 1942 with his Atlantic Charter involving the creation of a “United Nations” after the defeat of Nazi Germany, are largely the cause of this shift away from “Manifest Destiny” / territorial expansionism (still very much present in 1902, at the beginning of the 20th century, when the Filipino Revolution was crushed and the country reduced to a colony).

The scale of these two presidents’ ideological victory, in changing the interpretation of an entire historical record along with the country’s self-image into that of an “anti-colonial freedom fighter” (the “arsenal of democracy” as FDR would put it), is nothing short of incredible really.

To the founding fathers generation, the nature of the “American Union” was conceptualised quite differently.

Thomas Jefferson, in the 1790s, awaited the fall of the Spanish Empire “ until our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece ”. Historian Sidney Lens notes that “ the urge for expansion – at the expense of other peoples – goes back to the beginnings of the United States itself ”. Yale historian Paul Kennedy put it, “ From the time the first settlers arrived in Virginia from England and started moving westward, this was an imperial nation, a conquering nation .”
 
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https://chomsky.info/20080424/
The United States is the one country that exists, as far as I know, and ever has, that was founded as an empire explicitly. According to the founding fathers, when the country was founded it was an “infant empire.” That’s George Washington.

The model for the founding fathers that they borrowed from Britain was the Roman Empire. They wanted to emulate it. Even before the Revolution, these notions were very much alive. Benjamin Franklin, 25 years before the Revolution, complained that the British were imposing limits on the expansion of the colonies. He admonished the British (I’m quoting him), “A prince that acquires new territories and removes the natives to give his people room will be remembered as the father of the nation.” And George Washington agreed. He wanted to be the father of the nation. His view was that “the gradual extension of our settlement will as certainly cause the savage as the wolf to retire, both being beasts of prey, though they differ in shape.”

Thomas Jefferson, the most forthcoming of the founding fathers, said, “We shall drive them [the savages] — We shall drive them with the beasts of the forests into the stony mountains,” and the country will ultimately be “free of blot or mixture” — meaning red or black. Furthermore, Jefferson went on, “Our new nation will be the nest from which America, north and south, is to be peopled,” displacing not only the red men here but the Latin-speaking population to the south and anyone else who happened to be around.

There was a deterrent to those glorious aims, mainly Britain. In particular, it blocked the invasion of Canada. The first attempted invasion of Canada was before the Revolution, and there were several others later, but it was always blocked by British force, which is why Canada exists. The United States did not actually recognize Canada’s existence until after the First World War.

Another goal that was blocked by British force was Cuba. Again, the founding fathers regarded the taking over of Cuba as essential to the survival of the infant empire.

Adams, incidentally, later in his life regretted this. He condemned the Mexican War as an executive war and a terrible precedent. And he also expressed remorse over the fate of what he called “that hapless race of Native Americans which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty.” They knew what they were doing.
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Like I said Vouthon.

EU = “Fabian Imperialism”.
 
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Cathoholic said:
Like I said Vouthon.

EU = “Fabian Imperialism”.
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Nonsense. It represents the same thing the Thirteen American Colonies did, a voluntary union of states to form a strong and perpetual union to the betterment of its citizens. And indeed, unlike the US, the EU actually allows members to exit. Any notion any US state had that it could exit the Union was brought to a crashing halt when Lincoln decided not to accept the Confederacy’s independence. The most the UK is going to get out of the EU is a long hard negotiating process.

Ain’t the same thing at all.
 
EU = Fabian Imperialism.

niceatheist’s response?
It represents the same thing the Thirteen American Colonies did
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Sure.
 
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JamesV.Cameron said:
Why is it that malarkey?
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I was being tongue-in-cheek but the US is the only country I know of that actually makes potential citizens declare such.

My own great-grandfather had to make this “declaration of intention” in 1923 (I have his naturalization form to this day), when he immigrated to the United States for work purposes and lived with his cousins in Boston. I don’t believe he actually became an American citizen (he returned to the UK by the 1930s and got married, with my grandfather being born soon after).

In his case, he came from an Irish Catholic family in Scotland and his father had given succour to IRA prisoners incarcerated from 1916-1921 after the Easter Rising or during the Irish War of Independence, so he was personally all too happy to declare on oath that he abjured all allegiance to King George V of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The story passed down to me was that he absolutely hated the British Crown and so kind of relished this quirk of American immigration law.

However, these “first papers” with the declaration “I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate and particularly [head of state] of [country]…” are still a unique ‘entry’ rite of passage for immigrants / long-term residents that it is peculiarly American.
 
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niceatheist . . .
How could ever (sic) produce a counterargument to that insightful rebuttal?
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That was exactly what I was thinking of regarding you contradicting yourself here.

On one side you are implying how Europe is NOT imperialistic. That it is rather America who is imperialistic.
Hawaii was a travesty by any measure, even in the late 19th century. But the flimsy pretexts for the US gobbling up Norther (sic) Mexico . . .
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Out of the other side, you go and claim the EU . . .
It represents the same thing the Thirteen American Colonies did . . .
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How could ever produce a counterargument to that insight?
 
Loyalty oaths are the norm with citizenship
Look up “oath of citizenship” on Wikipedia
 
Theo520 . . .
Loyalty oaths are the norm with citizenship
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Exactly right!

I thought the same thing when I saw Vouthon’s “objection”.

You know @Vouthon. You spend a lot of time here criticizing Brits who you don’t think are “loyal” enough to surrender their independence and put themselves under the EU’s direction (although you refuse to put it that way).

Then you come on this thread and try to paint loyalty oaths as something bad.
 
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The RU is a voluntary association. Member states can leave. No army is going to show up to force them back in.
 
Ah, but I’m talking about the “no foreign potentate” bit which isn’t common and the declaration of intention as first papers before actually becoming a citizen. 😛
 
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I am sure Americans would also rather prefer a closer trading relationship with Mexico and Canada than with the UK. Doesn’t mean Americans want to be part of a supra North American state.

Being in political union and having economic relationships are two different things.
 
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